


Dead Man Walking

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: (Isn't it Jäger?), Lightly Implied Eren/Levi (but only if you squint), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Potentially Triggering to Those With OCD Tendencies, So fair warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:24:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you've never been an obsessive-compulsive paranoid, you just don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Man Walking

**Author's Note:**

> I recently started reading my friend's Levi/Eren work, [It's Funny Because Eren Can't Read](983204/chapters/1936932)[](983204/chapters/1936932), and as a consequence of Blake's excellent characterization and the similarity of Levi's behaviours to my own neurotic (but not necessarily debilitating) adherence to what is probably an absurd and occasionally improbable standard of personal hygiene, the two of us have ended up discussing Levi's compulsions at some length.
> 
> And as I was sitting there, trying not to obsess over how my keyboard is filthy and makes my hands feel oily and terrible even though they're probably still clean enough to qualify me as the best candidate for carrying out an emergency medical procedure with a high risk of complications via post-procedure infection in lieu of an actual doctor, I started thinking about writing something myself. 
> 
> Because, you know, it seems appropriate for a person with obsessive-compulsive behaviours and a deep interest in writing to try writing something about a character with obsessive-compulsive behaviours.
> 
> The result is this highly self-indulgent drabble. Please bear with me.

He didn’t believe it was raw ability or a quick intellect that set him apart from his comrades.

It wasn’t even the intensity of his hatred for the titans. If it were, of two things he was certain: Eren Jäger would have already won back the world for humanity, and they would find him standing in the middle of it, wild-eyed, naked, and probably still screaming like a red-faced infant with a wet diaper.

It wasn’t passion, strength, or courage that differentiated Levi from the rest of the Scouting Legion.

It was hesitation.

It was fear.

The faces that surrounded him on the battlefield were the faces of people who were afraid to die.

Levi didn’t want to die, but he knew, instinctually and inarguably, that he was going to.

Every time the bottom of his boots rolled down to make contact with a roof or a wall or a titan for just a fraction of a second before he kicked off again, he knew that this time, this titan, he would land wrong, he wouldn’t land at all, he’d be knocked from the air and crushed because he was too fast or too slow or just too human.

Every time a titan’s enormous face leered down at him with vacant eyes, eclipsing the sky like a vast unpalatable eternity of flabby mismatched features and huge square yellowing teeth in a slack and stupid mouth, he thought _‘Ah, so it’s today. It’s this one.’_

And then, without hesitation, without fear, he killed it.

And it wasn’t that day. It wasn’t that titan.

It was the next one. The next day. The titan after that, the day after that.

Forever.

Levi didn’t want to die, but a part of him, the same part that saw the transference of contamination outlined and set aglow behind his eyelids like a streak of filthy colour that no one else could see, knew that he would, and was resigned to it.

Levi was going to die, and he knew it not only when he was fighting titans, but when the battle was over, when he was washing his hands and when he was eating his dinner.

Every meal was his last meal, and every fight a place of supreme calm, because when he fought, there could be no wondering over what would kill him and no doubting his own sanity for knowing with such certainty that something would.

Levi hated titans, but their presence in his life proved beyond all doubt that his paranoia was warranted, and when they came for him, the jagged edges of a world coloured by danger he felt stalking him but could not see smoothed into a pocket of clarity and focus, as breathless and as still as the coffin he was sure there wouldn’t enough left of him to fill.

The resistance of a titan’s flesh against his blades did more to ease the whipcord tension of his muscles than hot oil and kneading pressure ever had or ever could. Each attempt was a slow exhale, each success a gasp of new air into his lungs that left him intoxicated, because it wasn’t this titan, he wasn’t going to die just yet.

When Levi left the battlefield, he began to feel things.

A stickiness between his fingers, a slickness to his palms.

A creeping line of cooling sweat trickling down the back of his neck, his harness chafing against his chest and thighs.

A sick, luminous swathe of something repulsive thickening the fabric above his left knee, worse than blood because he couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, nonetheless.

When Levi left the battlefield, the second thing he did was bathe.

He found out who he’d lost, and then he bathed.

The hesitation of his comrades often cost them their lives. Fear. Panic. Bad luck.

He knew that they were going to die almost as absolutely as he knew that he was.

He didn’t like losing them, but he knew he was going to. If he didn’t die today, he’d be burying or burning what little he could find of them tomorrow.

If he found anything at all.

They were all going to die, sooner or later, even him. Especially him.

All of them.

Well, except for maybe _that_ one.

Eren Jäger was a strange figure in Levi’s mind. Something of a curiosity.

He wasn’t certain when it had happened, but it had.

One day, when he had looked at him, he hadn’t seen the corpse he’d make hiding behind his deceptively animated face.

He’d just seen a stupid, angry kid who’d probably get them all killed someday with his weird shapeshifting bullshit.

Eren wasn’t a dead man walking. Eren was _alive_. He was alive and he was obnoxious and he’d probably still be alive and obnoxious tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, long after Levi was gone.

Levi saw something he couldn’t quite describe when he looked at Eren, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it.  

Kind of unsettled.

A little relieved, maybe.

Vaguely annoyed? Absolutely.

Inexplicably fascinated?

He wasn’t so sure about that one.

He thought maybe he just wanted the kid to take a proper fucking bath for once.

If he was going to go on living, he could at least take note of some basic goddamn rules of hygiene.         


End file.
